Toronto’s first black postman
The story of Albert Jackson and the man who wants a lane named after him
When Albert Jackson showed up for his first day of work as a mailman, on May 17, 1882, the other letter carriers refused to show him the rounds. The reason: He was black. The incident was reported by the press, which wrote about “the obnoxious coloured man.” White letter carriers and office staff were indignant that a black man was appointed to the job, which placed him in a higher rank than some white employees. The postal service reassigned Jackson to the menial job of hall porter, hoping to defuse the situation. It didn’t.
For several weeks, the story of Toronto’s first black postman was hotly debated in the city’s newspapers. On Jackson’s first day of work, white mail carriers told The Evening Telegram his appointment by the government was “a most impolitic move.”
The black community was galvanized by the injustice toward Jackson, a former slave from the United States who had escaped to Canada on the Underground Railroad. They were determined to see Jackson working his mail route and took their demands to prime minister John A. Macdonald. It was an election year, and they were heard. Wanting to please black voters, Macdonald intervened.
While the issue was contentious enough to earn the prime minister’s attention, the story of Toronto’s first black postman is little known nowadays. Neither the Ontario Black History Society nor Canada Post have much information on Jackson. But Toronto publisher Patrick Crean wants to make the public aware of Jackson’s legacy.
Crean learned about Jackson through Karolyn Smardz Frost’s book I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad, which Crean published in 2007 as head of Thomas Allen Publishers. He later learned that, by strange coincidence, he now lives in a home on Brunswick Ave. once owned by Jackson himself.
So when a neighbourhood association asked residents to suggest names for the roughly 25 laneways that slice through the west-end Harbord Village neighbourhood, Crean proposed Albert Jackson Lane. The proposal is now before the city for review.
Faith Jackson, who was married to one of Jackson’s grandsons, welcomes the tribute.
“His story is a part of the history of this city,” says Faith, 78, who raised her family in the house with her late husband, Bruce Jackson.
Frost, whose book won the 2007 Governor General’s Award for nonfiction, says there aren’t enough memorials to early black citizens. “I think it’s a really important thing that we acknowledge the contributions made by African Canadians who came to Canada in search of freedom,” Frost said. “They helped create our city, our province and our nation as we know them today and they are so rarely acknowledged appropriately.”
ALBERT CALVIN JACKSON was born in Milford, Del., around 1856. His father was a free man but his mother, Ann Maria Jackson, was a slave, making Jackson and his eight siblings slaves as well. When Ann Maria’s eldest two sons, James and Richard, were sold, she pleaded with her husband to run away and spare their other children a similar fate, Frost writes in her book.
In 1858, Ann Maria and her seven other children escaped to Philadelphia, where African-american abolitionist William Still ran a station of the Underground Railroad, helping fugitive slaves on their journey north to freedom.
He took careful notes about the runaways he encountered, including Ann Maria, and published their stories after the Civil War. Frost drew on Still’s writings while researching her book.
The Jacksons travelled to Toronto and stayed briefly with Thornton and Lucie Blackburn, fugitive slaves from Kentucky who had come to Toronto in 1834. Thornton, who owned Toronto’s first taxi business, and his wife helped freedom seekers get settled in Toronto.
It was while Frost was working on her book, a biography of the Blackburns, that she learned about the Jacksons, discovering that Ann Maria and a son were buried in the Blackburn family grave at Toronto’s historic Necropolis Cemetery. Ann Maria and her family lived in rented rooms in St. John’s Ward, a neighbourhood bordered by College and Queen Sts., Yonge St. and University Ave. where many newcomers settled, often living in slumlike conditions. She made a living by taking in washing, and sent her children to be educated, says Frost, a researcher at the Harriet Tubman Institute at York University. By the 1880s, black men living in Toronto had some political equality — they could vote — but social and economic equality remained elusive, wrote researcher Colin Mcfarquhar in a 2007 article for the journal Ontario History. At the time, most worked in lowskill and service-oriented jobs, Mcfarquhar said, some as labourers and waiters. Mcfarquhar stumbled on the letter-carrier controversy while researching his PHD on race relations in Ontario. “It does demonstrate how hard the black community fought to try and get full equality and full rights,” Mcfarquhar said. “If that didn’t happen there’s no way (Jackson) would’ve kept his job.” On May 17, The Evening Telegram published a story with the headline “The objectionable African” that described Jackson as “the obnoxious coloured man” and said his appointment elicited “the intense disgust of the existing post office staff.” Two days later, the newspaper published an editorial stating, “Objection to the young man on account of his colour is indefensible . . . Taxes are not made a penny less to a man because he happens to have dark skin.” Debate raged in letters to the Toronto World over whether black people were inferior; the newspaper carried an editorial stating that while “inferior races are a fact,” whites and blacks were politically equal. Jackson’s brother, John, who helped mobilize the black community, responded with his own letter, which argued that black men were capable of the same accomplishments when given the same opportunities. Another brother, Richard, a well-known barber whose clients included businessmen, politicians and publishers, may also have had some influence. The issue was settled in the political arena. In a May 30 editorial, The Evening Telegram wrote, “There is at least one time when the assurance is given that coloured people are just as good as people who are white. This is at election time.”
That night, a delegation met with prime minister Macdonald, calling on him to intervene. He did. Two days later, The Globe reported, Jackson was out delivering mail.
Jackson’s name vanished from the newspapers and he settled into life as a letter carrier, and eventually the roles of husband and father. In March 1885, he married Henrietta Jones, with whom he had four sons.
As a postman, Jackson likely earned a decent salary, which allowed him to buy property. In 1902, minimum wage for a letter carrier was $1.25 per day; by 1913, it was $3. The family’s first home was on Chestnut St., near the British Methodist Episcopal Church, where Jackson was a church leader.
In1914, Jackson bought a home on Brunswick Ave., where Crean now lives. Jackson died on Jan. 14, 1918.
After his death, Henrietta, who lived until age 99, purchased several homes in Harbord Village. So did her sons. At least nine houses in the neighbourhood have been owned by members of the Jackson family.
Great-grandson Jay Jackson says the legacy of Albert Jackson has been passed down through his family.
But the public knows little about him. That’s why, he says, naming the laneway is such a great honour.
“I like that each neighbourhood has, not just black folks worthy of a designation, but people from each community,” says Jay, 69. “Toronto is unique like that.”